VENTURA : Meeting to Focus on Social Change

Members of the Ventura Ministerial Assn. and Project Understanding will join forces tonight during a town meeting in Ventura focusing on social change in response to the Los Angeles riots.

A key component of the meeting, which begins at 7 p.m. at the Total Christian Life Center on Ventura Avenue, is how racism across Ventura County has prohibited some area residents from becoming fully integrated into society, organizers said.

“Some citizens in Ventura have needs that we are not discussing as well as we might, so we want to listen to the people at the meeting to better understand their concerns,” said Unitarian Universalist Church Rev. Dick Weston-Jones.

Weston-Jones said the riots compelled him to join other ministers in organizing a food drive for Los Angeles residents and later to lead this town hall meeting, the second since the rioting.

“Many people now believe that, as a society, we have to change the way we maintain an underclass,” Weston-Jones said. “That’s what we are hoping to address here in our community, not just in Los Angeles.”